Buiding a culture of nonviolence and justice step by step

by Ken Butigan

On my office wall I have a poster tattooed with the words, “Building a Rainbow.” The rainbow’s ribbons of blue, magenta, yellow, green, orange, and red are dazzling – but, alas, only half finished. This shimmering symbol of peace is visibly under construction, with its troupe of cranes maneuvering pieces of orange and blue precariously into place, its countless trucks and overworked paint wagons, its lattice of scaffolding everywhere, and even a flotilla of helicopters lumbering across the sky, each with its own splotch of color dangling below.

At Pace e Bene we work, as our mission says, to foster a just and peaceful world. While we would like to think that achieving this goal would be as easy as snapping our fingers–or suddenly glimpsing a rainbow appearing effortlessly after a spring rain–we know that it is a long, demanding, stubbornly creative, and precarious process.

Like the workers straddling the rainbow and welding its pieces into place, Pace e Bene for years has been joining people and organizations in many places to help fit one piece here, one piece there, contributing in our modest way to a rainbow that we call “a culture of nonviolence.”

Working on our piece of the rainbow began twenty years ago.

In February 1989 Pace e Bene was founded when Franciscan Sister Rosemary Lynch, OSF, Julia Occhiogrosso, and Peter Ediger met with Alain Richard, OFM and Louie Vitale, OFM to frame a “Franciscan service in nonviolence and cultural resistance.” They gathered in Las Vegas, Nevada and established an office and a small library in a nondescript building on the city’s westside.

Twenty years ago Pace e Bene began to take its first steps. It organized and joined initiatives for a nuclear-free future, a world without homelessness, an end to war and torture. It wrote essays and study guides. It led hundreds of workshops, trainings, retreats and courses that opened the space for participants and facilitators alike to plumb the depths of the violent and nonviolent options in everyday life and the larger life of the world.

As we mark our twentieth anniversary, Pace e Bene is taking the next step to build a network of love, compassion, and creative nonviolence in action. Our new website is part of this effort, as is our continuing to create educational programs, resources, and action strategies for nonviolent change.

Please explore this new website! And help Pace e Bene celebrate the past by building for the future. Please become a mmber of Pace e Bene today.

Thank you for joining in the work of nonviolent change as we slowly lift the next section of the precarious and powerful rainbow into place.